Letters from Rona / Family ties / Sort by date

In the first tentative phase of couplehood, every day seemed a contest between my way with domestic matters and my husband's. On top of all the everyday conundrums, we now had to negotiate Christmas. I had always assumed there was one right way to orchestrate seasonal cheer---and where I came from, we didn't wear tissue-paper crowns at the Christmas table. [more]

For all of us with empty places at our Christmas table, this is the season of missing. I've been thinking lately about those of you who've lost someone (especially your mother) because it's clear from my daily Google statistics that grief brings many people to this site. Here, a found poem from the searches of women missing their mothers. [more]

I wasn't ticking her name off a list, expressing my knowledge of red-carpet trends or flaunting my generosity with that famous little blue box. I was just an eight-year-old with saved-up allowance in the palm of my mitten. And what I chose to buy was as fine a gift as any I have given. [more]

After close to 40 years with the man I love, there are times when the sweetest thing he can tell me is, "I'm going out of town on business for a couple of days." [more]

Sometimes I look back on my son's teenage years and wonder how we ever got through. It's not that we had a hell-raiser on our hands, just that there are so many ways for a promising, likeable, headstrong kid to fall from the precipice of adolescence. A kid like Brandon Crisp, age 15. His funeral in Barrie, Ontario, is expected to draw 1,000 mourners who loved him, searched high and low for him or simply know in their hearts that what happened to Brandon could happen to their own child. [more]

Although Hallmark doesn't know it yet, April is grandchild month around here: a new grandbaby on the way, another for my sister-in-law Linda, plus an essay of mine in a terrific forthcoming anthology Eye of My Heart: the Hidden Pleasures and Perils of being a Grandmother. [more]

With the Washington rumour machine in pre-election overdrive, we're not hearing much about the sad, sordid tale of John and Elizabeth Edwards: he the philandering senator and former presidential hopeful, she the wronged wife with a deadly cancer. A scant two months ago, the press was busy raking muck and hinting of explosive revelations to come. But that was before Joe the Plumber, Bill Ayers and the Palin family's $150,000 campaign wardrobe. I will never forget the Edwardses, though. [more]

I could tell you that infidelity is not the end of the world. I could add that an apparent tailspin a marriage, which looks to outsiders like certain disaster, just might bring a change for the better. But maxims don't have anywhere near the impact that a good story does. That's why I'm sharing a story from the Globe and Mail's fine obituary of Connie Rooke, the writer and critic who died this month after nearly 40 years of marriage to the writer Leon Rooke. [more]

I thought Steve Martin's memoir, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life, was going to made me laugh. Instead this startlingly wise and nuanced book made me think in a whole new way about what it takes to embrace the future as your best and boldest self without leaving a painful past behind. [more]

After nearly 38 years with the man I married, I must know at least a smidgen about what it takes to stay together. But when my son and his longtime fiancee finally tied the knot, I didn't want to overload the newlyweds with sage advice. Which life-changing insight to share? My mother's, of course. [more]

When our son moved back home in his mid-20s, we all thought he'd stay for a couple of months until he planned his next step into the adult world. Turned out we had him with us for a couple of years. And by the time he finally moved out (into a house we helped him buy), things had grown a bit tense between us and our beloved only child. [more]

When I read your story about making amends with your sister, I recognized my sister and me. We drive each other crazy and haven't spoken for years. I'd like to make amends but I doubt if my sister wants to hear from me. I so envy women whose sisters are their best friends! What's your advice? [more]